by J. P. Pomare
Then he contacted me out of the blue. I thought the game was up. I thought he must have realised that some of his mail had gone missing, someone had been watching his house. It turned out he just wanted to s ell the car I had bought him, the one that was still in my name.
I hoped he had changed his mind about Aspen, so I agreed to meet him. When we saw each other I knew what would happen; the moment he stepped into the bar and his eyes fell on me. I felt it: the longing that drew us together the first time. It was back, stronger now than ever. We both knew it was inevitable. I had spent seven years hating him and it was all wiped out in a moment. We shared a bottle of wine. I can’t love you again, Freya, but I miss you. He kissed me. It was one weekend together, before he disappeared again.
When I saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, that’s when I stopped thinking about Aspen and Wayne. That’s when I stopped making those trips to Queensland to watch his house. Suddenly the stakes had risen, and I remembered what Wayne was capable of.
I won’t lose Billy the way I lost Aspen. I won’t go through it again.
When I check my phone in the kitchen, I see I’ve got a missed call on WhatsApp from Jonas. I check Instagram. He’s posted more photos. He’s in the jungle feeding a monkey a piece of banana, tagged in a place called ‘Monkey Forrest Ubud’. Then he’s on the back of a scooter, swaying palms in the background. He’s in Bali. I go back to my study and call him back.
‘Jonas,’ I say. ‘Sorry I missed you earlier.’
‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘How are you?’
‘Stressed.’
‘It’s a stressful time for everyone. Just make sure you’re meditating lots.’ A long pause. ‘So how is Billy?’
‘He’s good.’
‘You keep him leashed to you at all times still?’ There’s laughter in his voice.
‘He’s a sensitive boy.’
‘You need to cut the apron strings sooner or later. Let him be his own person.’
‘I’m not that bad,’ I say, making myself laugh.
‘Have you been keeping yourself busy?’
‘Same old. Trying to swim more and exercise. I saw a couple hanging around the river near my place.’
‘A couple?’
‘Yeah, they’re young and a bit strange.’ It’s been a couple of hours and I still haven’t heard back from Corazzo about the van.
‘Nothing wrong with a bit strange.’
‘I’m paranoid. I guess I’m feeling a bit anxious about Henrik’s release,’ I say. That’s because you’re the one who put him away.
‘Sure, but remember: Henrik can’t hurt you. Mum doesn’t think there is anything to worry about.’
I let out a small huff of laughter. ‘She doesn’t think so?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ There’s an edge to his voice now. And we were having such a nice normal conversation.
‘I think you know what it means. It means Mum isn’t herself, is she?’ I’m careful with my words. My brother still hasn’t really accepted what Mum is going through.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m worried about her. She’s got no idea who she is. How can you not see that, Jonas?’
He’s quiet for a moment so I try to steer the conversation away from Mum. ‘How’s Bali? It must be hot there.’
He doesn’t accept the peace offering. ‘She’s much more with it than you give her credit for.’
‘Right,’ I say, reading his tone, knowing this won’t end well if I push it any further. ‘Sure.’
‘She’s been so supportive, don’t forget that.’
‘I know,’ I say. But what did she do to help with Aspen? I ask silently. Where was she then?
‘Have you been visiting?’
‘I was out there this afternoon.’
‘Did you take Billy?’
‘He was at school.’
When the call ends, I realise Billy is standing at the door of my study. ‘Mum, who was that?’
‘Your bloody uncle,’ I say, tossing the phone on the desk. I stand up and head towards my bedroom. ‘He wants you to see Grandma.’ Jonas was pissed; he’s got a temper.
Billy follows me.
‘Grandma is sick,’ I explain. ‘Sometimes she forgets things. But we have to pretend that she is the same.’
•
Later, when Billy is asleep in bed, I step out into the night, leaving Rocky inside and locking the house behind me. I walk down towards the river. There’s a fork in the path: one way leads back up along the river to the road, where the van is parked; the other way leads to my swimming spot. I steel my nerves and turn up the track leading to the road. Even though the evening is cooler, I can feel the prickle of sweat on my chest, the breeze whispering on my neck.
At the road, the van takes shape in front of me, a beaten-up old thing. As I approach it, the gravel crackling beneath my boots, I wish that I had a torch to blast the path before me. I don’t know what I’m expecting to see when I peer through the window, but the sight makes my heart catch. In the back of the van I can make out the shape of two bodies. I can see dark nipples, curls of pubic hair. They are so still, like drowned things trawled up from the deep. I don’t move. I’m nailed to the spot. Then I realise the man’s eyes are open. He’s staring back at me.
I stumble backwards, my eyes still fixed on the van, expecting the door to fling open, the man to rush at me.
Could I have imagined his eyes open? No, I know what I saw.
I turn and sprint back down the path. Within minutes I’m home, jamming the key in the lock. Inside I lean against the door for several seconds, waiting for my pulse to stop racing. When I’m calm again, I walk down the hall to check in on Billy, still sleeping in his room. Then I check all the doors are locked. It’s going to be one of those nights: sleep coming in gasps and the morning coming too soon.
THE WATCHER
I SEE YOU. There in that big house of yours where anyone could be hiding. You think you escaped unscathed. You think your lies will go unpunished. You get up in the morning, you meditate then prepare breakfast. You take the child to school and trust the teachers to protect him while you go about taking yoga classes, shopping, reading, walking that big dog down to the river.
Then, in the afternoon, you collect the boy. Almost always you arrive early, before all those other women. You think you are protecting him, but you are selfish, you are suffocating him. You think you are giving him a better childhood than your own. You imagine him growing up as a creative, happy and engaging member of the community. Maybe one day he will move into politics – the kind you agree with, the selfless planet savers, the suitless men and women who once strapped themselves to trees. You don’t believe he has violence in him, but you can’t nurture out those darker traits embedded deep within.
At night you can’t sleep. You sense something is wrong. Your hair is knotted and split like spun wool. You have chewed your nails down and not even that shrink with the pinched eyes and pencil skirt can make you believe it’s all in your head. You know it’s not all in your head, because you have been through this before. You went through it with your first son. You knew disaster was rippling towards you; you couldn’t stop it then, and you can’t stop it now.
If something happened to you, the boy would have no one in the world to look after him. I could raise the child, you know that. Maybe I will take him away. It’s just a matter of showing him what you really are and what I can give him.
You sense my presence. You’ve almost caught me in the act – you’ll never know where I have been, what I have been organising for you. Yes, Freya, I have something very special in mind for you. It won’t be long now. All it will take is one slip-up. This is what happens to liars. You think you know pain? You know nothing.
FREYA
Three days to go
‘I HAD A NIGHTMARE,’ Billy says, the words fraying at the edges.
He was sound asleep when I got back inside, but now he is in the doorway of his
room, eyes heavy-lidded, dragging his teddy bear Bun-Bun by the arm. Some nights he doesn’t sleep at all. What causes these nightmares? Can a child inherit memories? He comes over to me on the couch and I lift him onto my lap.
‘Aw,’ I say softly, rocking from side to side, stroking his hair. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got you now. The nightmare is over.’
‘It was one of your paintings,’ he says. ‘A man climbed out of the picture and grabbed me. I couldn’t breathe.’
I can feel my face changing, the mask slipping. A drop of the brow, a shift of the mouth. Billy has seen my paintings before the final coat. He has seen what the black square covers. I stopped painting because I didn’t want to scare him. I think about the couple out there in the van, how close they are right now.
‘Ow,’ Billy says. His eyes are wet and sleepy. I realise my fingers are knotted in his hair, squeezing. ‘Mama, stop.’ I release my grip. My gaze settles on the darkness beyond the windows. On the nights when Billy can’t sleep, I take his red glowing alarm clock from his room so he is not reminded of how late it is.
I take Billy and put him in my bed, trying not to think of how the last time I let him sleep in my bed I woke up with a dampness pooling beneath me, soaking into the mattress. I tuck him under the covers then go into the bathroom to brush my teeth, staring at myself in the mirror.
In bed, I shuffle in against Billy and breathe in the scent of his shampooed hair. I squeeze him hard against me.
‘Don’t, Mama,’ he mutters, irritated. ‘It hurts.’
The roller shutters are up. Outside the window the ghostly paperbark sways. There’s a breeze and it’s going to be thirty plus all through the night. The country is a stick of dynamite. The fire bunker is a twenty-metre dash from the house. It’s stocked with provisions but it also houses all my unsold paintings, I can hardly bear to look at them for all the memories attached. The paintings are about a time I’ve tried so hard to forget. If a fire came and I couldn’t escape, I’d carry Billy out there to the bunker.
People often leave their pets behind when fleeing bushfires. They find them later, scorched, pink, skinless. Volunteers move silently among the charred trees with rifles, finishing off those shrivelled wallabies, dying wombats, cats, dogs, horses. If a fire did sweep through here I’d make sure Billy was safe, then Rocky, then myself. The best thing I can do for now is be prepared.
Two days to go
In the morning I drag the lawnmower in a ring around the house. The grass is white and dry as chalk.
Out in the yard the heat brings sweat out between my shoulder blades. I work my way down towards the fire bunker. It’s the largest one they could build. First they dug a huge hole in the hillside, then they deposited a concrete box into it about the same size as my lounge room.
You couldn’t design a more ideal storage facility for my art – a consistent low temperature, airtight, not a single photon of sunlight coming in. I keep a few bottles of wine in there too. The handle is dusty in my palm. Inside, I hit the light and see my bubble-wrapped paintings leaning against one another in the corner. I see the wine, the bottles of water, the tinned food. It’s all set up.
Back at the house, I realise we are running late. ‘Shit,’ I say. ‘Sorry, Billy, we’d better rush. Can you get your own breakfast while I have a quick shower?’ Billy woke with a bruise the colour of an eggplant around his eye from where the doorhandle had hit him.
When I get out of the shower and head back into the lounge, a magpie is strutting along the balustrade with its chest out. Billy is at the table, a piece of toast in his hand. The peanut butter is still on the bench. I can’t stop staring at his bruised eye, it’s not a good look.
‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Let’s get you to school.’
•
After I’ve dropped Billy off – only five minutes late – and returned home, I sit down with my acai bowl. The sense that I am being watched comes over me again. Scopaesthesia. Gaze detection. There are countless names and explanations for this feeling, but I just know that someone is watching me right now. Someone is fucking with me – trying to distract me, to peel the skin of Freya Heywood away.
I open the newspaper on the kitchen bench, the missing girl has already slipped from the first page but I find a new story about her a couple of pages in. She still hasn’t been found. The police are searching for a van. O-U-P, I think. Could it be related? I call Corazzo.
‘Freya,’ he says. ‘Sorry I didn’t get back to you. Seem to be busier in retirement than I was when I worked.’
I realise I’m holding my breath. ‘So, did you find anything?’
‘Well, nothing noteworthy. Van is registered to a twenty-four-year-old from Brunswick, Liam Moore. Works at a gardening store. He had a parking fine in June 2019, which has been paid, other than that not a mark against his name.’
Liam Moore. It doesn’t ring a bell. ‘Anything else you can tell me?’
‘Nothing sticks out really. Clean as a whistle. Harmless, I’m sure, but I can ask someone to drive out and send them on their way if you’re still worried?’
‘That would be good, if you can,’ I say.
•
I collect Billy from school. Back at the house, Billy watches me as I tug my shoes off beside the door. There is a mouse beneath his eye from the doorhandle. What must the teachers think?
‘How come you don’t have five toes, Mama?’
‘Well,’ I begin, dropping my shoes by the door and walking to the kitchen, ‘when I was a little baby, a thread of hair got wrapped around my toe.’
Billy squats down and fingers the gap where the toe is missing. I reach out and put the kettle on.
‘And the hair got tighter and tighter as the toe swelled more and more. I was a fat baby so I could barely move. Eventually the hair around Mama’s toe got so tight that the toe swelled up, and then it got unhealthy because the blood was trapped inside and so a doctor’ – I pause for a moment, dropping tea into the teapot – ‘well, they removed it.’
‘Removed it?’
‘Very carefully. They surgically removed it, so it wouldn’t hurt Mama.’
The kettle screams. I kill the burner and fill the teapot. Billy is lingering; there is something on his mind. ‘What is it, Billy?’ I ask.
‘The man,’ he says. ‘The man scared me.’
I place the cup on the table, frowning at my son. Melodramatic little prince – he was scared of Jock, the security guy. ‘He was just here to help us,’ I assure him. ‘To put the buttons on the wall.’
‘No, not that man.’
A cold hand drags its fingers down my spine. ‘What man, Billy?’
‘The man at school.’ He shuffles his bottom lip over his top in concentration.
‘Billy, look at me,’ I say, taking his chin in my palm. ‘Tell me: what man you are talking about?’
Billy shrugs his face free from my grip. I can feel my pulse; I can hear it as if it’s the only sound.
‘The man at school, near the back fence. We were looking at the ants.’
‘What did he do?’ I can barely control my voice. ‘What did the man do?’
‘Nothing.’
Billy tries to move towards the couch, but I snap him back by his wrist.
‘Ouch,’ he says, grabbing his shoulder.
‘Billy,’ I say.
Billy looks down then slowly raises his eyes back to mine. ‘It hurts – let go.’ He tries to pull free, but I tighten my grasp.
‘Tell me. What did he do?’
He takes one finger and places it over his lips.
‘The man did that?’ I say. I put a finger to my own lips. ‘Like this?’
Billy nods.
‘Did anyone else see?’
Billy shrugs.
‘Was he looking at you?’
He twists, turning back to the couch. ‘I don’t know,’ he murmurs. I can’t remember.’
I grab his shoulders. ‘Speak up,’ I say, more harshly than I intended.
�
��I don’t know. He was far away.’
‘But you are sure it was a man? You are sure you saw him?’
‘I think so.’
‘Okay,’ I say, before clearing my throat. I wrangle my features into something approximating a neutral expression, pushing back against the fear and anger, pushing it out of my head. I am in control, not him. ‘If you ever see this man again, I want you to tell the teachers. Show them where he was.’
He nods.
‘Was he about Mama’s age?’
‘You’re scaring me.’
A long breath escapes. I take my phone and leave the room. Stepping out into the heat on the back deck, I hold it to my ear, finding the school phone number in my contacts. It’s after four, but someone should still be there.
The phone rings and rings until finally it goes to voicemail. I hang up and dial again. Still no answer.
Could the man be Wayne?
‘Billy, come here.’
He trudges over, reluctant; cartoons are on the TV.
‘What did the man look like?’
He shrugs. He’s on the edge of tears.
I screw my palms into my eye sockets. ‘Sorry, Billy,’ I say. ‘Just tell me: what did the man look like? Was he tall?’
Billy nods.
‘Did he have dark hair?’
Billy nods again.
I think back to those days. The years of love, Wayne’s big yellow Datsun sliding on the gravel. The afternoons of sex, of laughing against his collarbone. I think of Aspen trapped in the hot car, the smashed window. The people staring as I calmly sat down on the footpath and watched the ambulance zipping away. Then I remember Wayne, all the lies he told, and the truths he exaggerated. I think about everything he told the lawyers and the judge.